Explain various themes in the novel A Walk in the Night by Alex La Guma.

A
principal theme in this story is one of displaced aggression and of the victimization of
innocent people.

The situation in apartheid (the term is not actually used in
the story) South Africa is one of reflexive distrust and hatred between the different races.
Michael Adonis has just been fired from his job, and then, walking down the street and minding
his own business, he's stopped and shaken down by cops who suspect he's carrying dagga
(marijuana). He understandably seethes with resentment against the boer
policemen and their treatment of him. Shortly after this, in his tenement building
Michael visits the flat of an elderly white man, a has-been actor named Doughty. The man offers
Michael wine, but when he asks for the bottle back Michael strikes out at him with the bottle
and accidentally kills him.

When the killing is being investigated a police
constable named Raalt angrily thinks about his grievances towards his wife. The officer driving
Raalt in the police van senses trouble will occur, as Raalt demeaningly questions the residents
of Michael's building. Raalt hates black people and is itching to strike out against someone. A
man named Willieboy has happened upon Doughty's body and been seen fleeing from the building.
When information is given to Raalt about this, the police think they have their suspect. Raalt
and his partner later spot Willieboy, who runs from them, and Raalt pursues him and shoots him.
Willieboy dies in the police van after Raalt refuses his partner's recommendation to call an
ambulance and delays getting Willieboy to the station in the police van by making a needless
stop on the way to buy cigarettes.

It's easy to see that the dynamic among
these characters is one of suspicion and hostility, leading to accidental and intentional
violence and killing. Michael is somewhat like Bigger Thomas in Native Son.
Though both men kill unintentionally, they realize that in some sense the deaths are
not totally accidental but are partly the result of reflexive resentment over the unfairness and
oppression the whites have directed against them. The policeman Raalt takes out his own inner
anger on people who cannot defend themselves, the non-white urban population. Throughout his
novella,depicts theof a poor district in Cape Town as one of decay and hopelessness. People
strike out against each other due to the displaced anger they feel, rooted in various modes of
despair and frustration in which they are trapped. It is a bleak picture on the
whole.